Managed service providers (MSPs) and other network or cloud oriented information technology (IT) outsourcing organizations provide computing services to client users via a network. A client that subscribes to such a service may access the various computing services and resources to which that client subscribes. In this manner, a subscribing client may be able to access significant computing resources, which, due to the expense and expertise required to maintain those resources, could otherwise be unavailable to the client. For example, a business that is starting up, or which prefers not to employ technical staff, would be able to access computing resources without the delay or expense that may be entailed by assembling in-house resources.
An MSP may provide concurrent access to resources to a large number of client users. Resources, such as a hardware device or database, may be shared among several clients. Each client user of an MSP or other cloud oriented IT organization may be restricted to access only those parts (e.g. hardware, software, service) of the IT network that are relevant to that client. Access is provided in such a manner that each client is unaware of other clients of the MSP.
A configuration management database (CMDB) may be used to model shared resources that are made available by the MSP. A CMDB may model the resources, for example, using virtualization. With virtualization, the MSP IT environment is modeled such that an abstracted virtual computing platform is presented to each client. Components are modeled as accessible by the client only in abstracted virtual form. In other cases, a cloud oriented IT organization may be modeled using a multi-instance approach in which a separate instance of a topological database is created for each client.
A cloud oriented IT organization may be modeled using a multi-tenancy approach. In a multi-tenancy approach, various clients, or tenants, are enabled to access a modeled single shared resource (instance) or shared information.